Explain this crazy rule about Italian driving licenses. Regardless of how long you’ve been driving, you’re required to take the Italian driving test after a year and then spend three years driving almost like you’re in a horse-drawn carriage. Is it really that strict, or can you find a way around it?
Does my Russian driving experience count or not — that’s also what I’m wondering before moving. As I understand it, Russian driver’s licenses don’t give me anything in Italy? If I don’t plan to drive during the first year, can I just not bother with them at all and do everything from scratch in Italy?
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And if I get a driver’s license in another Schengen country before moving — later, with an Italian residence permit, will they be accepted normally or will I still have to exchange them like Russian ones? I also found out that for neopatentati (newly licensed drivers) the car must be no newer than six months — I didn’t know about that requirement.
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There’s one thing about converting licences: when you swap a foreign licence for an Italian one you become a “newly licensed driver” (neo-patentato) with all the power restrictions — for 3 years. If you take the test from scratch at an Italian driving school, you can later just take the practical exam for a motorcycle without theory, or go take the BE category test and lift the limit. According to Italian forums, people really manage it within 2 months if they sign up right away — the hardest part is the language, not the driving.
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I realized one nuance about exchanging a license in another EU country — driving on such a license doesn’t mean the period is counted from the date of that exchange. It’s counted from the date you obtained residency in Italy. And at some point you can simply lose the ability to exchange it at all — then you’ll have to get a license again in your country of residence, from scratch.
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One important point — if the license was obtained in another EU country but was converted from a Russian one, Italy still won’t accept it as valid driving experience; you’ll have to retake the test. Only if you actually took it there from scratch is there a procedure to exchange it without exams, but the request to that country takes a long time. At the driving school down south they told us people sometimes wait several months for that.
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I got my driver’s license in Germany — there was an option to hand over my Russian one in exchange for being exempt from the mandatory practical hours at the driving school. I didn’t do that; I passed completely from scratch. The driving school here says I should go through the standard exchange procedure without exams, but the request to Germany takes several months — they warned that that’s the longest part of the process.
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Things look grim with the queues in Milan — through a school it’s at least 8 months, plus the mandatory one-month gap between theory and practice. If you can get to a nearby small town, it really speeds things up. In Novara they say they manage it in 3 months through a school.
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